Monday, June 15, 2009

Timothy Geithner & Lawrence Summers / Washington Post:The Case for Financial Regulatory Reform – Over the past two years, we have faced the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. The financial system failed to perform its function as a reducer and distributor of risk. Instead, it magnified risks, precipitating an economic contraction that has hurt families and businesses around the world.

We have taken extraordinary measures to help put America on a path to recovery. But it is not enough to simply repair the damage. The economic pain felt by ordinary Americans is a daily reminder that, even as we labor toward recovery, we must begin today to build the foundation for a stronger and safer system...

By restoring the public's trust in our financial system, the administration's reforms will allow the financial system to play its most important function: transforming the earnings and savings of workers into the loans that help families buy homes and cars, help parents send kids to college, and help entrepreneurs build their businesses. Now is the time to act.

TradingMarkets.com:Six Flags files for chapter 11 Bankruptcy -- Theme park company Six Flags, Inc. said in a Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, on June 13 that it had filed a voluntary petition for relief under chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The filing marks the final step in the company's ...

"You walk in there as a potential buyer and there's still a developer and a broker and a marketing person but in reality the developer has been eliminated from the equation and the bank is deciding whether or not to accept your offer," Hersh said.

Of course, some condo developers are doing what must be done and lowering prices either in consultation with lenders or behind the scenes with buyers....

Delinquency rates—an indicator of future credit losses—fell across the industry, but analysts said the decline was due to a seasonal trend, as consumers used tax refunds to pay back debts, and they expect delinquencies to go up again in coming months...

Paul Krugman's fear for lost decade — As analysts and media hailed the tentative emergence of green shoots last week, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman caused international shock with a prediction that the world economy would stagnate just as badly, and for just as long, as Japan's did in the 1990s...

Stimulus Concession — Biden tells “Meet the Press” that “everyone guessed wrong” on the impact of the stimulus, economy was worse off than anyone thought. — Backs away from the estimate that the funds could create or save 3.5 million jobs, instead promises 600,000 by the end of the summer...